… and has committed to sharing its archives of public photographsonline. The New York Public Library along with The Smithsonian Institution, The Brooklyn Museum, and others have joined Flickr Commons, a project dedicated to sharing and describing the public photo collections of the world’s leading cultural heritage institutions.

We expect to learn a lot from Flickr users and are thrilled at the exposure that this project will give to our photographic collections. We also see the Flickr Commons as a sort of training ground for our staff — a place to get some serious hands-on experience collaborating with users in a vibrant social Web community. Down the road, we expect to implement similar tools and features on our own site, say, for example, in the Digital Gallery.